THE FINANCIER
was no certainty that he was worth so much. Frank heard
his father say that Semple had had some bad years at
one time and another. He was a man of George Water-
man's type or style—medium tall, spare, dark-eyed, dark-
haired, with a sharp, clean-cut, albeit pasty-white face,
and a dapper, supple, well-thought-out and pleasant
manner. Having had no early advantages, he was a
little uncertain of himself, and did not appear to have
much to say at any time. He talked with Cowperwood
and his son of trade, slavery, the growth of Philadelphia
—which was now over four hundred thousand—the pros-
perity of their church, and so on.
Mrs. Semple was an interesting type in her way—not
as young as Frank Cowperwood, for he was but nineteen,
while she was twenty-four; but still young enough in her
thought and looks to appear of his own age. She was
slightly taller than he was—though he was now nearly
his full height (five feet ten and one-half inches)—and,
despite her height, shapely, artistic in form and feature,
and with a certain unconscious placidity of soul, which
came more from lack of understanding than from force
of character. Her hair was the color of a dried English
walnut, rich and plentiful, and her complexion waxen—
cream wax—with lips of faint pink, and eyes t 1, varied
from gray to blue and from gray to brown, acc._
to
the light in which you saw them. Her hands were thin
and shapely, her nose straight, her face artistically nar-
row. She was not brilliant, not active, but rather peace-
ful and statuesque without knowing it. Young Cowper-
wood looked at her the first time he saw her, and, without
knowing anything about her, or grasping the nature of
her disposition, was carried away by her appearance.
Somehow this placidity matched his own. Her beauty
measured up to his present sense of the artistic. She was
lovely, he thought—gracious, dignified. If he could have
his choice of a wife, this was the kind of girl he would
like to have. She looked at him several times dreamily,
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